Envy

I went to Best Buy today and got much more than the few CD’s that I had planned on buying. It wasn’t anything that was sitting on a shelf with a price tag. It wasn’t anything with flashy graphics or trendy styling or even any plastic. What I got was a bit more self-awareness. I finally became conscious of the fact that I envy, to varying degrees depending on my mood, people with normal lives.

Perhaps what triggered it was I saw a couple that I had gone to school with. I had never seen them together back in school, but as they were happily perusing the aisles of Best Buy it was apparent that they were either married, or at least “together.” I could see that Laura was fairly pregnant.

It wasn’t like I was stalking them and watching them or anything. But when I saw them across the CD section I stopped and looked, mostly trying to remember their names (which took a minute, but I did).

As they went from the CD’s to the DVD’s they were in their own world. A world that, at least from the outside, looked very nice. A world of happiness. A world of being with someone you care about. A world of not being alone.

Yes, I know that every relationships has problems and such, and so I’m sure that they are no exception. As I said, I was just looking from the outside, and only seeing as much of their lives as you can see of a train as you sit at a railroad crossing.

Somehow that triggered an involuntary reaction in me and I began noticing other people too. I noticed the little kids running around, fascinated with all the cool toys and gizmos in the store. I noticed the couples walking around taking for granted the fact that they were together. I noticed the people who, despite what outward appearances may argue, were normal.

In a way I feel like the character Kevin Spacey plays in the movie Seven (a very good flick to see if you haven’t).

In a single trip to Best Buy, I have become Envy. A single glimpse into people I used to go to school with transformed me into deadly sin number seven.

Am I saying that I want to live their lives, or the lives of any of the people I saw today? No. Am I saying that I envy any one of the attributes of their life more than others? I don’t think so. What I envy is the fact that they are normal.

I covet their ability to lead normal lives. I covet their ability to care about someone, even to the point of vowing to love them and cherish them, forsaking all others, until death. I covet their ability to not be tormented by thoughts of things they wish they didn’t think about, yet cannot control. I covet their ability to live on and make the best of their life and go beyond any hurts or emotional baggage from their past.

People might say that I CAN in fact have a life like that, but if it’s even remotely possible it will only be on the outside.

I really don’t know why, but I seem to be unable to do things that normal people can do without giving it a second thought. I can’t really love people. As much as I wish I could I can’t really love people. I can kind of get to a certain point where I care about someone and can be concerned for them. Yet I can never really love someone, even in the most watered down version of the word.

Forgiveness is another thing that I can’t do. I know this is usually harder for most people than loving, yet people somehow manage. Somehow they can get beyond things that have happened or been done to them in the past. As for me, I never forget. Not only that, but the pain of things doesn’t heal with time. It lingers and stays with me forever, thus making me a magnet. Things keep sticking to me and piling on and never falling off. As much as I wish they would because I really don’t like constantly feeling every hurt and hate I’ve ever had, I can’t change it. Even when I thought I was a Christian I would pray and pray to be freed of this, and yet it remains.

As I’ve said in other entries, real happiness also escapes me. Much of it has to do with all the things that are constantly burning inside me I suppose. The fact that I can’t control my subconscious and I keep thinking about all the things I wish I could forget does a good job at constantly keeping me down.

Life tends to get rather dull and depressing when it’s only spent trying to escape from yourself.

This is the burden I wish I didn’t bear. Although if I had the opportunity to take it and give it to some happy, “normal” person and gain their freedom instead I don’t know if I could. I really don’t know if I could put all this on someone else.

Maybe I care about people more than I think. Or maybe I’ve just gotten so used to being this way and I’m so used to carrying all this that I can’t imagine being without it.

I have tried many times to change, but that didn’t work. I went searching for God and thought I found him and tried to let him change me. I figured that if he made me originally and I broke, then he could fix me. That didn’t work either. So I guess Tyler Durden was right (if you don’t know who that is, go watch the movie Fight Club-it’ll be well worth your time) when he said, “Self-improvement is masturbation.”

Self-improvement is nothing more than building yourself an emotionally charged illusion that will eventually fail and your grand idea of who you could be rapidly deflates once reality sets in. This is because in spite of who we would like to be or what we’d like to be like, we are what we are and we are who we are.

Perhaps this is why not even “God” could change me (even when I was willing). Perhaps it’s why you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Perhaps it means I’m screwed.

So yes, thanks to Best Buy I am now more aware of the things I’d love to have and be, and thus more aware that I can never have or become them. Wonderful, isn’t it? If I live to reach the average age for males to die of natural causes, I still have more than 50 years left.

Welcome to this prison that is the beginning of my hell.

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“I think I was born without a soul (pray for me)

I think I was born without a voice (cry for me)

I think I was born without a pulse (love for me)

god, why was I born without a choice? (die for me)”

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